Chapter 25
Has VTC's tour not actually ended yet?
The articles clearly said the world tour was over.
Still, I checked again.
Was it because of time-zone differences?
Or had the member who mocked VTC simply not posted anything yet?
With trembling fingers, I searched foreign social media and fan communities.
English.
Japanese.
Chinese.
I refreshed the mixed-language timelines again and again.
But the world was calm.
Too calm.
By 3 p.m...
The air inside the mart felt even heavier.
Now, people walking by barely looked at WG Instant Rice.
I began wondering whether the unusual design had actually hurt us.
Only a few hours ago, I had been full of confidence.
Still...
I forced myself to calm down.
“No.”
“The time just hasn't come yet.”
I swallowed dryly and opened VTC's real-time reaction list one more time.
Then...
A red exclamation mark appeared at the top of my phone.
The social media site I had been checking suddenly exploded.
The real-time rankings shifted violently.
From first place to tenth...
Words that had not existed a moment earlier filled the chart.
[VTC]
[VTC Insult]
[Japan]
[China]
The moment I saw them, my eyes shook.
I clicked the top video link almost unconsciously.
A recorded social media live from a famous idol group active in Japan and China began playing.
The live broadcast had already ended.
But screen recordings were spreading rapidly.
The video showed the group members laughing at VTC's awkward foreign-language pronunciation.
Because the group was mainly active in Japan and China...
They had specifically mocked VTC members speaking Japanese and Chinese.
The moment had only lasted briefly.
But VTC's enormous fandom had not missed it.
The comments were already filled with anger from fans around the world.
And that anger quickly began moving in an unexpected direction.
Thousands of comments appeared in real time.
The speed was almost beyond human comprehension.
The anger had already moved beyond the idol who made the comments.
It spread toward the countries they were associated with...
And toward products connected to those countries.
[No reason to give money to people who look down on Korea.]
[Are they insane? You do NOT touch VTC!]
[What's the point of VTC promoting Korea around the world if we're buying Japanese and Chinese products and making those people richer?]
[Let's boycott the products they advertise first!]
[They'll learn when the ad money disappears.]
[All their advertisements are connected to Japan or China anyway.]
[Boycott them.]
[Let's show the power of Korean fans!]
The message from the future.
It was happening exactly as written.
But...
The mart remained quiet.
I swallowed dryly while empty carts passed the instant rice shelves.
Online, VTC fans were raging.
They were supporting VTC and attacking the idols who had mocked them.
But that anger had not yet reached the rice aisle.
People still picked up the familiar red and yellow packages from the major brands.
By 6 p.m...
WG Instant Rice sales remained terrible.
I had stood there all day like a statue.
Yet my steps home felt even heavier.
“Did I move too early?”
I rolled around on my bed.
“No.”
“The timing is just slightly different.”
“It'll happen soon.”
Despite saying that...
I could not sleep.
I lay in bed refreshing my phone again and again.
Then, around 2 a.m...
A massive crack finally appeared.
On a famous online community...
Someone uploaded an old image.
It was a post written years ago by one of the C Group members involved in the mocking livestream.
[Koreans are all talk. They don't even have enough technology to make their own rice without adding Japanese ingredients.]
That single sentence was like pouring gasoline over a fire waiting to ignite.
The old screenshot spread everywhere.
The internet exploded.
And soon...
The attention moved away from C Group itself.
The flames jumped toward Korea's instant rice companies.
[Instant Rice Ingredient Breakdown]
A post with a simple title.
Its view count skyrocketed.
[Here is a full breakdown of the domestic instant rice products we eat.]
[I wrote this so people can check before buying.]
[OI Food: Contains Japanese extract.]
[Uttuk Food: Contains Japanese additive.]
[Rohan Food: Food contents are domestic, but the plastic container is made in China.]
[I researched this myself and was honestly shocked.]
[None of the major instant rice brands are 100% Korean-made.]
Comments exploded beneath it.
[This betrayal is insane.]
[How can instant rice not be 100% Korean?]
[Wow. I'm seriously shocked.]
[So I've been eating imported stuff this whole time?]
[Lol everyone is overreacting. It's like 0.1% or 1%. That's basically nothing.]
└ [Then it isn't 100%.]
└ [That's exactly why people are shocked.]
└ [It doesn't matter whether it's 1% or 0.1%. The point is that foreign material is inside. Read the room.]
[Don't forget. These companies advertised domestic rice and Korean products. Isn't that basically misleading?]
[I guess C Group had a reason to laugh at us. Even our rice isn't completely ours.]
[Of all things, they messed with rice?]
[So there isn't a single 100% Korean instant rice product on the market? That's creepy.]
Finally.
The time had come.
Among all the comments filled with shock...
I quickly uploaded one photo.
The WG Instant Rice package I had photographed at the mart earlier that day.
I uploaded it without a single word.
People immediately reacted.
[What's this?]
[Never heard of it. WG Food?]
[0% / 100%? Damn, the package is crazy.]
[So they're literally advertising 0% imported, 100% domestic.]
Then a new post appeared.
[Found an Instant Rice Product Proving Its "Purity" During This Mess]
